How did it go ? it went well, I think its fair to say that overall the project went very well the project took a bit of effort to get off the ground ,indeed even gettin gthe idea together was hard work,a few ideas were bandied about,good ideas but not the right idea , we settled on the Plastic bottle recycling.or acctually NOT recycling idea as it is a major issue and as luck would have it, at the same time as we started on our project the issue also bacme a national issue in the papers and on TV.

I dont want to go over old ground as most of what we did and how we did it is in older posts of my blog. so i will concentrate on our feedback from the event and after the event.

Our event has a website https://tmsproject2017.wixsite.com/tmsproject which should be open to the public soon,this was a requirment of the University module but is an essential record of our project from start to finish.

After our event we took a look at our “Message in a bottle” feedback collection these were plcaed together and photographed below

The section below entitled Reflection is taken from our website and reflects the veiws of our group when we got together after the event to discuss how we thought things had gone.

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Reflection

The 480/270 event proved to be a success. Although initially the number of future participants was slightly overestimated, on the day, there were times when all the spaces at the making table were filled with participants. Having supplied catalogues with examples on what can be created out of reusing plastic brought the community together and empowered participants to take action towards a plastic free life. Informing on the negative effects plastic has over humans and the planet might even have helped further promote the 3R’s : reuse, reduce, recycle by raising awareness towards this issue of great concern.

By blending creativity with usefulness, through the workshops conducted on the day, the project further promoted local connectivity. Being a public event, we encouraged everyone passing through the Packhorse Shopping Centre to participate.

Globe Arts’ plastic response became a valuable resource on the importance of educating the young generation, which in return, further helped educated members of the public that attended the event.

​Connecting with Journey to Zero-Waste Huddersfield not only further promoted the event but became a conversation point on their group which once again, entailed raising awareness as well as helped further weave a network between organizations and members of the community.

​By promoting the event on the Arts Council website, exposure for both 480/270 and The Making Space was established. The event was also promoted on their weekly newsletter which we hope helped keep the conversation going.

​Considering the event was scheduled to take place early on a weekday, the attendance at workshops was still satisfactory. This was mentioned on the project’s promotional Facebook page by members of the public who would have wanted to participate but couldn’t due to work schedules.

Apart from raising awareness and bringing the community together, the value of the project can also be measured through the amount of plastic bottles we successfully collected for recycling. With the help of Kirklees Council,the contents of two 660l bins were collected for recycling 4 times throughout the length of the project.

Those were our reflections but we also got reflections from our hosts at the making space and below are our discusions and reflections by the Making Space ..(Again these are available on our website)

Meeting the Brief

Comments from The Making Space:

“Part of the brief is about connecting lots of different pockets of creative things that are happening. It’s quite important to The Making Space to have all these collaborations and join all the dots of things that are happening in Huddersfield. We also know it’s quite a difficult thing at times and it takes time to build those relationships. To do what you’ve done in the short amount of space is really good.”

“That was one of the things that I was both amazed and impressed at, was the scope of it [the project] in the time available.”

Social Benefits Of The Project

We took a lot of small actions which we hoped collectively would have a big impact and benefit society, these included:

A sociable making workshop where the issues surrounding plastic are discussed and recycling and reusing is encouraged.

Inviting other organisations to participate, celebrating the arts and independent communities in Huddersfield.

Providing recycling bins, with information on recycling points in and around Huddersfield.

Recycling our bottle installation at the end of the project. Following the circular economy model.

If we have managed to change two or three people’s mindset on using plastic, it’s the start of that ladder of awareness.

Collaboration

We found working in a group of six tricky at times. There were times when you felt you didn’t have a voice. Sometimes somebody would say something in a meeting that you didn’t quite understand but before you’d had chance to ask anything further the conversation had quickly moved on and you were left with the feeling that perhaps you’d missed something valuable. Sometimes an idea would be put forward and someone else in the group would say no. There are times when you need to let go of an idea and accept it’s not right for the project but there are also times when you have to listen to your gut and pursue an idea, perhaps by forming a smaller collaboration within the group with another like-minded member. Develop that idea and present it again for consideration.

The Making Space can relate to our experiences because they are a cooperative. They told us that it has taken them three years to understand collaborative working and they have now developed a meeting facilitation format. Their sessions are run according to those rules with the purpose of giving everyone a voice. They vote on ideas but also give individuals the freedom to pursue an idea.

Execution of the Event

We recognised as a group that we could have done more to attract passers-by across the threshold on the day. Some did give it a try, but the majority avoided approaching the public. The Making Space commented that this is something they too find uncomfortable, but it gets easier with practice and it’s worth pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. Most people will respond.

In hindsight, maybe moving the low barrier, revealing the making area would have opened the space more to the passing public. The location of the Packhorse Centre means that most of the public use it as a short cut to get to where they need to be. The Making Space told us that the Packhorse Centre are trying to encourage people to stay in the centre so events like ours are of real value. They suggested it may have been helpful to say to the public, ‘It will only take five minutes’, because we don’t know what their time commitments might be.

We discussed whether we should have had a series of more specialised workshops instead of just having different items that people can choose from. Considering who came in, if we had done something very intricate it might have put people off. People did come in saying I’m not creative and then they took part and made something.

The Making Space thoughts:

“I think you got the balance write in terms of having specific things for people to make, also just coming in and making something. It depends what everyone is confident in doing, so you are catering for everyone in that respect. If you just have a table of plastic bottles, people would have had no clue as to what to make. But also, it’s just a suggested thing to make.”

How this project as benefited The Making Space as an organisation.

Comments from The Making Space:

“Definitely has in lots of different ways. It’s been good for us to work with university students. Fantastic link with the university. Also, a project that links with what we are trying to do, which is socially engaged things and trying to get the people of Huddersfield to embrace with more creative things in the town centre.”

“It’s been nice to have the space used straight away. It’s given us a re think that we need to get some things going and some ideas and what’s possible in this space.”

“It’s high on their agenda [the Packhorse Centre] to get more students from the university coming through here. So, the fact that we have done a project with university students, which is about getting people to come in, actually is a useful thing to be saying to them.”

“Inviting people is quite useful for The Making Space. That lets people know about us, lets people know that we collaborate with the university. That’s quite a big benefit for us. The press release, contacting organisations. It’s not just the people who came through the door to do the workshops on the day who now know more about The Making Space, that it exists and who we collaborate with.”

We asked if connecting with other organisations, such as Globe, makes it easier for them to approach these organisations in the future. They said that starting these relationships gives them the possibility to build on that.

Further Making Space comments:

“All that partnership development. These are processes that take a really long time. You did well to get people to answer your emails. If you had emailed me to say no one had got back to you. I would have said, OK, fair enough, that’s part of the course. That process of making personal connections is how stuff happens.”

“Huddersfield in general is quite bad for connecting up all the amazing things that are happening. It’s hard to make these collaborations. Creative Kirklees only works on a certain level. It doesn’t embrace people who don’t know about Creative Kirklees, and who don’t use the internet. It doesn’t cover everything that’s going on, things only get highlighted for one week. It’s really hard to make these collaborations because there is so many things happening.”

How The Making Space would build on this event.

“Do it in different locations, a portable workshop. In a library. Then you are capturing a different kind of customer.”

“You could spin the idea. Theming the same kind of concept. Puppets from plastic, sea creatures, making a plastic city. Spin the idea in lots of different ways but the concept is the same.”

“You could actually go completely the other way and get some makers who work professionally, to do things out of plastic and put on that kind of exhibition. That gives you a model where you can show some stuff where it’s like, oh wow that’s amazing! Then you can do a hands-on workshop for people who obviously aren’t going to be at that level. But you show them some of the simple stuff that you were doing on the day.”

“Having the professional model is like an aspirational thing. Oh, wow look what you cando withthat!”

“It can be quite scary when you see it at that level but then if you have a structure where you can say to people; if you could just pop in and do something for 5 mins, obviously it’s not going to be this but it could be this and show work.”

“It creates that link between someone who doesn’t think they are creative to going, oh, actually I took part I this workshop where there were these amazing models. You are connecting artists with members of the public.”

“You have done a very basic prototype of that already. Which could be developed in that way. Because if you think about it you’ve got all of those things.”

Did we demonstrate innovation?

Comments from The Making Space:

“In the time scale that you have had you have been innovative. It’s not easy coming up with an idea in the first place. That takes a lot of brainstorming and time.”

“For a craft workshop (because I’ve done quite a lot) I think you had a really good spin on it. In terms of it had kind of a sustainable / political stance to it and a lot of craft workshops don’t have that deeper message, they are just fun that you do on a Saturday afternoon. So, to have a workshop that’s got this purpose, or political or social engagement to it, is an innovative thing. Moving forward that is a really good angle to run workshops with because I think that’s where it’s going rather than being just something you do and forget about. It’s actually got a message, a purpose to it.”

Presentation at University

For University we put together a presentation which was part of our MA Module the presentation was presented to all out fellow MA year students,we each put together a few Power point slides each and took turns to present our Powerpoint slides and each said a piece at the presentation.

below is the complete presentation power point

Thats the complete presentation before we took questions from our peers and from our tutors

we each did a part of the presentation and below are the slides I provided and my speach presented with each slide

My slides and my presentation speech

480/270 Project presentation

Slide one

Before we got our idea sorted out I went on a quick visual reconnaissance, to see what visual art works were on public display in Huddersfield

This slide shows a wide and eclectic range of visual art on display free of charge to anyone walking around Huddersfield, from large public artworks such as the abstracts above Buxton way, the two James Wadsworth Statues of Art and Literature which stand outside the Library, the more discreet “Mooning Man” who’s whereabouts is known only to the more discerning ones amongst us. Graffiti art and memento mori grave art. even local eccentric Jake Mangle wurzel has his artwork displayed. These images were later put into the two murals seen here, and later used in a collaborative work by myself and Assunta.

Slide two

Once we had our Idea for the 480/270 project we set about finding out some facts and figures about plastic bottles, here are a few from the BBC website

Slide three

More verifiable facts from reputable sources such as the Telegraph, and the Guardian newspapers, on the same side of the argument for a change, other quotes from website such as Greenpeace, The BBC and ecowatch make for interesting reading.

“over the last ten years we have produced more plastic than during the whole of the last century”

“Virtually every piece of plastic that was ever made still exists in some shape or form”

Our presentation was practised about four times we timed each other so as to not go over the time alloted,we stuck to our prepared speach, we stuck to out alloted time and we managed to do a good job despite the nerves, we presented clearly and precisely, working as a team in a well rehearsed presentation.

when questions were asked we had answers, we had made a mistake in one of our quotes 😦 but as far as I know only the one.

We call it the exhibition but really it was just an opportunity for passing shoppers to drop in and see what we made for and at our Event

We didn’t expect many people to drop in ,it being Easter and all that, but we did get quite a few popping their heads in and asking what we were doing,this I think was because we had removed the wooden barrier splitting the making Space room into two sections,by removing that obstacle people were able to see into the entire space which I think helped,and with hindsight we should have done for the event. The people who did come in seemed impressed both by our efforts and also by the message about plastic recycling,and saving the planet (or as much of it as WE can,little steps and lots of them ).

Having opened up the room we laid out the “plastic response artworks” on the big table and kept the work that was all ready on the walls where they were.

here are a few photographs of the exhibition

Laura and chris setting out the artworks before we opened to the masses .

the artworks on the table and work by Globe arts on the wall

The table with “plastic responses ”

Roman helmet .. By ME

A table full of Art

Hummingbird made by one of the Making Space showing what can be done by a sculptor

We had our event as planned on the 14-03-2018 at the making spaces new venue in the packhorse centre Huddeersfield

As has been reported in my last blog we had got the ceiling covered with bottles,two large bags of used bottles placed in the trailer at the back of the room, our personal responses were placed lovingly in the window

Above the room being prepared for opening

some of our personal responses in the window

We put up the artworks we had made ,and others which had been made for the project,such as the work made by Globe Art Studio’s junior Artists ,a local art group for young people

Globe Art Studio’s work

And myself and Assunta’s collaborative photographic/Textile representation of Huddersfield’s world famous(ish) Plastic Lion made from a photographic collage of Huddersfield’s outdoor artworks transferred by a dye sublimation technique onto satin and the lions main represented by plastic bottles.

Our posters which were made to put across facts and figures about the effects of Plastic pollution

The message JUST in case you had not spotted it is …. Recyle

we even got our response installation for the public to write what they thought of our event … made from plastic bottles of course

message in a bottle please

some of the feedback we recieved

Nearly ready a quick view of the outside

and our stuff in the window on the left… in the right window a rolling power-point display of the facts and figures about plastic pollution which has been covered in a previous blog

others soon joined in, some from the general public and some Artists from the Making Space arrived to give support and to contribute.

two members of the public who joined in the fun

and music too

Laura making a necklace from a lovely green bottle

Other people around the table were chatting away and making lots of different artworks

Books and pamphlets to help those with out much experience

Not just me taking photos Chris was active with his camera

we even got the Academics using there hands ………. our senior Lecturer Dr Rowan Bailey

A few artworks being produced

Lots of people just how we wanted it 🙂

Not massive amounts but this was a Wednesday afternoon on a cold day in Huddersfield so we are doing well

And all too soon its all over, the music stopped

Just the art on the wall left in the building

and the mess on the tables

OK there are a few body parts in the photo .. but I’m sure get the idea 😉

On the whole I think the idea went down well in almost every respect, and when you consider it was a first for most of us ,not bad at all for a first attempt,

Collaboration is both a delight and a nightmare in equal measures, you get to work with others and bounce ideas around, come up with things which I would possibly not have thought of on my own, also ideas which I was wanting to do had to be shelved as they did not quite work out and fit in with the way everyone wanted to do things,this is the ART of compromise,and nothing I wanted to do but which did not fit in was thrown away, It’s all stored up in the canyons of my mind for another project on another day.

The People from our Joint project Collaborators The Making Space seemed to be quite impressed with our project,which is good to know as they have done these things before and know what a first event by inexperienced artists / students could descend into.

WE had our meeting with the making space people to get final approval before we started to set up our project in their working space at the packhorse centre Huddersfield and got the Ok from them to start to set up our project that was way back on the 14-02-2018

here’s the group photo of most of out team and the people from the Making Space

Having got consent and collected our bottles we finally started to physically put some shape to our event,first up was the Bottles ,we agreed that we would hang plastic drinks bottles from the ceiling to emphasize the problem which we are trying to bring to the public’s attention

so here we go I took some stills of the “hanging of the Bottles” Tom set up a time lapse recording of this also.

Tom setting up the Time lapse

The offending articals plastic drinks bottles with a life of over 450 years before they degrade

Tom fastening up the first Bottles ably assisted by Assunta holding the Steps as required by common sense and health and safety.

The begging

The team (minus me ,the photographer) hard at work getting bottles ready to hang

the team hard at work

The ceiling covered in Plastic drinks bottles

Meanwhile Assunta’s Lion project for which I supplied the photographs and the collage had arrived

The unveiling of the Lion

The Lion

Thats Stage one of our project completed .. the hard physical bit .

Next I was in charge of sorting out a Power point presentation which with a bit of technical help from Tom and contributions from other members of the team,we intend to show in some sort of rolling presentation on the day.

Here is the power point so far more images will be /have been added to it

After lots of work on ideas for posters and flyers ,it seems that the team has made up its mind to go with a more formal approach and come up with the two below

the frustrations of team work are as always, compromise…. I was once told that “A camel is a Horse designed by a committee”

they are nice posters,and will i’m sure after a little work and tidying up be very effective

it just seems like i am wasting my efforts, the project is doing well but i don’t feel as if it is anything to do with me … posters, logos all seem like a waste of time and effort. I’m not used to this compromise lark 😀 things also get a little confused when we are all communicating by whats app group msgs. we all have a good working relationship face to face but confusion sets in over whats app,our two hour meeting got things sorted and moving.

5-00pm just back from our meeting feeling better now i’ve had my medication 😉 we got a lot done in two hours the poster has been tweaked a little and work for the week shared out between us.

Apart from that all is going well I have made some collages from my photographs of the Art works on show on the streets of Huddersfield,these are for a collaborative piece of work with Assunta who wants to use my collage for her textile piece ,my work has been turned into a Sepia piece and she will print it on special paper and then transfer this to a textile base as part of the project.

so here below are the two collages in sepia

Left side mural/collage

Right side mural/collage

The challenges of team work are difficult…

Will the rewards of team work be worth it ? at this stage of the project I have my doubts but I suspect that at the half way stage of any project doubts creep in,I have no doubts that we will pull off the aims of the project and that it will work ,and be a good group piece of work,my fears are it will put me off collaboration and group work forever.

WE showed our pitch to the Making space people and thankfully they were very positive about what we proposed so now the hard work begins.

I have started to put together some ideas for posters and flyers for our event,I have kept them text free for the moment just concentrating on the Visuals the text can be added later as and when we decide on what they will be used for ,or even if they are good enough to use,we are all getting a few ideas put forward this week when we shall really start to move forwards.at the moment though every idea is just a proposal for posters ,flyers and advertisement.

so here’s my poster/flyer rough drafts

Rene Magritte influenced idess based on the oceans having plastic bottles rained down on them polluting the seas and oceans for years to come these first draft posters are all variations of that theme.. Plastic Bottles take over FOUR HUNDRED and Fifty years to degrade……

as above but posterised in Photoshop

A different wave pattern and some different colours for the bottles,also some bottles floating on the waves My current favourite.

Minor varriations

A Darker version and not just in colour this one is an idea for showing a Dirty Ocean/sea

Basic versions of an Idea all can be changed and altered as the master Images are on PSD files and contain all the Photoshop layers used and a few not used.

on Friday we attended the

Culture

Community

Creativity

Conference

organised by ROTOR our local arts council funded transdiciplinary Dialogue and Debate Group

I have been fortunate to have been involved with ROTOR before at a minor level taking photographs of one of their events and of the artists involved one of MY photographs was used on the website advertising the event too see it here http://www.culturecommunitycreativity.co.uk/

screenshot of my photo on website and the real thing below

a nice surprise to see it on the website but would have been nice to be credited.

two of these Events are discussed in older writings in this Blog (see if you can find them 😀 You might like what you see)

some very good and very interesting speakers ,the opening (act ? 😉 ) speaker was Marsden’s own Internationally renowned Poet ….. Simon Armitage.

Simon did a great job of opening the Event , I’m not a great fan of poetry but he did a very good speech and showed how much depth has gone into his poetry and also into where his poetry, in this case carved into rocks in the great wild outdoors of northern England is situated.

Phil Wood followed Simon and gave a brilliant speech full of wit and wisdom and a nice (if somewhat politically biased) trip down Huddersfield’s memory lane

other speakers followed, with interesting examples of how community arts work (and sometimes don’t work) in different areas not just of the UK but also we had two speakers all the way from Amsterdam.

all this followed by workshops and a chance to discuss our own project , somewhat timid-ally with the great and good on the panel which consisted of:

The event had a wonderful little booklet which came with it giving us all the information about the event and had some good photographs in it. I was once again surprised to see one of my own photographs from a previous event in the booklet (see below) once again without credit.

and a cropped version of one of my photographs (which I took for Rotor for expenses only whilst doing my degree) without credit as photographer.

below the photo before cropping to vertical

and again with rough crop lines

A bit of a disappointment that I didn’t get credited as this would have been a good place to have had my Name mentioned.

Apart from that little niggle and moan the show was well worth going to,and I met a few interesting people and learned a little about how they do things.

Yesterday (14th) we got to present our pitch for the Event/Exhibition Idea with our partners “The Making Space(Huddersfield)”

Our Final Power point is as follows with a brief description of what was pitched.

Opening slide just to show our logo and who and what we are

General pitch before we tell them what our story is

The Hook …

showed the slide then had a brief pause before asking if those figures meant anything to anyone on the Making space panal.

when they said no

All was revealed.

480 is the number of plastic drinking bottles used by the average household in the UK per annum

270 is the number of those bottles that are recycled per household,per annum

The Idea.

Aims and objectives.

our pitch was to have an event at “the Making Space” consisting of artistic reuse of Plastic Drinking Bottles, an event whereby local people are invited to creatively make art from plastic bottles and raise awareness of the pollution problem caused by said bottles.

More info on the pitch as to how it covers our UNI brief and also manages to raise public awareness of the problem,while bringing people together to make Art.

Quick dip into our research of other Arts based groups and of environmental Artists enough to show that we had researched our brief but not too much to make our pitch too long and loose peoples interest, these things can and will be gone into in detail at another time.

Other Artists work just to show what can and is being done(referenced at end of Power point).

Mandy Barker international artist who we have been in contact with, and who is too busy to be with us, but is willing to make comments and take an interest in our work through our social media and our website.

The Event

“Making at The Making Space” possibly “Making @The Making space”

An event for the creative people of Huddersfield to come together and make things, sculpture and art work made on the day using plastic bottles, also art work made for the event but not at the event can be brought in beforehand and displayed on the day.

The making of art on the day will be documented visually via photography and possibly video streams.

Using our plastic bottles to decorate the ceiling of the Making space following the theme of 480 bottles to raise awareness of the amount of plastic waste made by each household in the UK.

The Exhibition

Made at (@ ?) the Making Space

Display at the Making Space of artworks made for and at the event, photographic documentation of the event and the artwork, written descriptions and artist statements

The displays at the exhibition will also be available online at facebook, Instagram and other social media and also on our own website, creating an opportunity for people to leave comments and feedback.

How we intend to promote our event and our Exhibition

An open invitation for Questions by our hosts and partners from “the Making Space”

Que to open conversation about what we have presented and also how.

references for images used in Power point presentation.

Well it was St Valentines day after all and it’s not too arrogant to say our hosts at the Making space … loved it